It's time to get hip to 'gypsy punk' music

Born in the Ukraine and discovered in New York, Eugene Hutz’s globe-trotting ways are elemental to the style of music played by his band, Gogol Bordello. Hutz calls that style “gypsy punk.”

Hutz and his bandmates found enough stationary time in New York to record the latest Gogol Bordello album, “Seekers and Finders,” released last month. In advance of the band’s Cincinnati show, Hutz discussed his recent travels and why he decided to take on the responsibility of producing “Seekers and Finders” himself.

Question: Where are you living?

Answer: I’m back in New York City, after seven years in Latin America.

Q: Where were you living in Latin America?

A: I was living in Brazil for about six years, and I was in Argentina for about a year.

Q: Did music bring you to Brazil?

A: It was partly music but primarily women. That’s how the trip started.

Q: I was going to ask you which country is a better place to live, Brazil or the U.S., but maybe I should ask which country has better women.

A: Well, that’s a highly personal preference. I’ll just say that I basically went to Brazil to visit a girl I was in love at the time with, and then I came back home seven years later.

Q: Typically a band is like four dudes who all live within a mile from each other. Is it hard to keep a band together while living apart?

A: The formative years when the band solidified, we were all living within a few blocks of each other in New York City. Then, as the band progressed and people were able to do more things, after touring, it became a new kind of lifestyle. I was basically part of the Brazilian fabric. Then New York City kind of called us at the same time. But at the same time, it’s all happening from a different point of view than the early years, where we were knocking on doors and creating our own scene. Now we can move pieces on a chess board a lot easier.

Q: “Seekers and Finders” is the first Gogol Bordello album you produced yourself. Why did you want to do it?

A: It’s time. My chief interest in music is accessing that feeling of alchemic process, that magical feeling that you get when you’re just getting immersed in music and you have your first recording device and you’re a wizard, laying down the first drum track and adding the bass line, and you’re 15 years old and you think it’s the most amazing thing in the world. That feeling is very precious and most people lose it because of ramifications of the music industry, delivering something on a deadline and that sort of crap. That’s where poetry dies. That’s where the muse says “(expletive) you” and takes off. And I’m very protective of that relationship still. I would like to have a very gentle relationship with the other side from where music is coming from, and that sometimes just requires a very, very individual approach. You’re your own beast and your own matador. You’re there till five or six in the morning, and you’re at it, and you’re the only one there. And that’s pretty much how I think it should be done.